Panel discussion: Malicious portraits, caricatures and stereotypes

How can we understand derogatory images? What is the relation between yesterday's anti-semitic caricatures and the Muhammed caricatures of today, or Charlie Hebdo's satirical drawings for that matter?

Comic magazines were an important element in the rising mass culture as well as the political discourse during the first three decades of the 20th century. The anti-semitic image of the "jew" as a "type of race", detached from the majority, was established and widely spread in these papers.

The biennale feature a selection of these images. The items in the exhibition are a selection of cartoons and comic strips published in Swedish newspapers and magazines in the early 20th century. The purpose of this is to illuminate how stereotypical depictions have evolved and how the mechanisms of it look today. How can we treat this history of imagery based on anti-semitism and racism without repeating it? Who gets to - or does not get to - present these kind of images and whose freedom of expression should be protected?

These questions, and much more, will be discussed with Lars M Andersson, Lecturer in History at Uppsala University and author of En jude är en jude är en jude – representationer av "juden" i svensk skämtpress omkring 1900–1930 (A Jew is a Jew is a Jew – Representations of “Jews” in Swedish Comic Press Between 1900–1930); Moa Matthis, Ph.D. in Literary studies, author, editorializer and text editor at Kunskapsbanken Bilders Makt; Tobias Hübinette, senior lecturer in Intercultural pedagogy at Karlstad University, and Benjamin Gerber from the Jewish congregation in Göteborg.